My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
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GENUINE AND FALSE EXPERIENCE OF THE GRACE OF GOD (Part II)
By Egoumenos (Abbot), Archimandrite George of our Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory (Gregoriou) - Holy Mountain
Forms of Experience of the Grace of God
What are the experiences of grace that a Christian can receive so that his faith and Christian life will not be for him something mental and external, but a true spiritual feeling of God, a communion with God, a habitation of God in which the complete man participates.
It is first and foremost an inner information that through faith in God, he will find the true meaning of his life. He feels that his faith in Christ is a faith that comforts him, internally; that it gives meaning to his life, and guides him, that it is a strong light that illumines him. When he perceives the Christian faith within himself this way, he begins to live the grace of God. God is not something external to him.
Another experience of the grace of God man receives when he hears in his heart God's invitation to repent for his dark and sinful deeds, to return to the Christian way of life, to confess, to enter the path leading to God. This voice of God that he hears inside him, is a preliminary experience of the grace of God. All the years that ne lives far away from God, one cannot understand anything.
He begins to repent: he confesses t the confessor for the first time in his life. After confession he feels a great peace and joy that he has never felt before. And then he says: "I have been comforted". This comfort is the visitation of divine Grace in a soul that has repented and one that God wishes to comfort.
The tears of a repenting Christian when he prays and asks to be forgiven by God or when he confesses are tears of repentance. Those tears are very comforting. They bring lots of peace to the soul of man. Man will then feel that these are the gift and the experience of divine Grace.
The deeper man repents and reaches a greater love for God and prays with a godly eros (love), whereby most of his tears of repentance become tears of joy, tears of love and divine eros. The tears that are above and beyond the tears of repentance are also proof of loftier visitation and experience of the Grace of God.
We approach to commune the Body and Blood of Christ having repented, confessed, with fasting and spiritual preparation. After receiving Holy Communion what do we feel? Deep peace in our soul, and spiritual joy. This too is a visitation of divine Grace and an experience of God.
There are, however, other, superior experience of God. The supreme experience of God is the vision (theoria) of the Uncreated Light. This was the Light the Holy Disciples of the Lord had seen on the Mount of the Transfiguration. They saw Christ shine like the sun with a Heavenly and Divine Light, which is not a material, created light, like the sun and other created lights. It was the Uncreated Light, namely the Light of God, the Light of the Holy Trinity. Those who are completely cleansed of their passions and sins, and who pray with a sincere and clean prayer, are the ones who are deemed worthy of this great experience of seeing the Light of God in this lifetime. This is the Light that will be shining in the Eternal Life. They not only see it from now, but they are also seen in this Light even now, for this Light envelops the Saints. We do not see it with our eyes, but the clean of heart and saints do see it. The bright halo that is painted around the heads of the Saints is the light of the Holy Trinity that has illumined and sanctified them.
In the life of Saint Basil the Great we read that when praying in his cell, they could see him entirely enveloped by the Light, and his cell was flooded by that Uncreated Light. We see the same thing in the lives of the Saints.
Therefore for someone to be found worthy of seeing the Uncreated Light, is one of the highest experiences bestowed by God, and is not given to everyone but to very few - to those who have progressed in spiritual life. According to Abba (Father) Isaac, in each generation, barely one person manages to clearly see the Uncreated Light. There are however even in our day Christians who are worthy of this unique experience of God.
Of course we need to stress that everyone who claims to have seen the Light does not mean that he has seen the Uncreated Light. The devil deceives them, and shows them other lights - demonically or psychologically - fooling them into believing that it is the Uncreated Light, when it is not. For this reason, every Christian that hears something or has a certain experience, must not readily accept it as though it comes from God, because he could be deceived by the devil. He must, however, confess it to his confessor who will then tell him whether it is from God or if it is a deceit of demons. A lot of caution is needed in such cases.
Determination of a Pure Experience of the Grace of God
Let us now look at the conditions which ensure whether different experiences we have are genuine and not false.
The first condition is that we should be persons of repentance. If we do not repent of our sins and cleanse ourselves of our passions we cannot see God. As the Lord says in His Beatitudes (Makarismoi), "Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God." The more man cleanses himself from his passions, repents and returns to God, the more he will feel and see God.
To attempt to achieve experiences of God through artificial means and methods - as is done by the heresies of Hinduism, Yoga, etc., is a mistake. Those experiences are not from God. Those are experiences derived through psychological means.
The Holy Fathers tell us: "Give blood and receive spirit." In other words, if you do not give the blood of your heart with your repentance, prayer, fasting, asceticism, you cannot receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit. True spiritual experiences are given to those who through humility do not ask for spiritual experiences but ask God for repentance and salvation. To those who are humble and say, "My God, I am not worthy of receiving a visitation of Your grace and Divine and Heavenly solace and spiritual pleasures." To those who through pride ask God to give them experiences, He will not give them true and genuine experiences due to their pride. So therefore the second condition is humility.
The third condition for receiving a true spiritual experience is to be within the bosom of the Church. Not outside the Church; because outside the Church the devil will deceive us. When a sheep becomes separated from the flock, it will be devoured by wolves. Within the flock there is safety. The Christian is safe, inside the Church. However, when he leaves the Church, he is exposed to his own deceits, and those of other people and of the demons. We have innumerable examples of many people who did not heed the Church and in their spiritual state, eventually fell victim to deceit. They even believed that they saw God or that they were visited by God when in reality the experiences they had were demonic and destructive. It also helps greatly to offer pure and fervent prayers. The Truth is, that during the time of prayer God gives most spiritual experiences to man, which is why those who pray with longing, zeal and patience, receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and feel the grace of God.
False Experiences of the Grace of God
People have false experiences of God when they believe that by themselves, with their own powers, in heresies, in groups, in religious gatherings, outside the Church, they can receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. They gather around some new "prophet" acts as their leader and they believe they are receiving the grace of God.
It so happened that I was present at a gathering of Pentecostals in the States in 1966 during my visit there. Their "church" was a school assembly hall. At first, someone began to play some music with soft sounds which, as time moved on, became increasingly more intense, deafening and frantic, and aroused excitement in the assembly. The music finished and the preacher started. He too began with gentle tones and as he continued, he began to shout increasingly louder. He too eventually created as excited atmosphere. And after all the crowd had been subjected to auto suggestion and hysteria, they too began to shout and move their arms about frantically, while uttering totally unintelligible noises. I could sense that the Spirit of God was definitely not there, given that the Holy Spirit is a Spirit of peace and not of such turmoil and excitement. The Spirit of God does not visit through artificial and psychological means. I felt rather sorry for the children that were there with their parents, as they were to suffer the consequences of this mass neurosis.
(To be continued)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George